


Matches: Or a Treatise on the Education of a Young Gentleman

by JaneTurenne, rabidsamfan



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Holmes ala Jeremy Brett, M/M, Smut, Watson ala Jude Law
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-14
Updated: 2010-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-31 04:42:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3964768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneTurenne/pseuds/JaneTurenne, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidsamfan/pseuds/rabidsamfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which we postulate the existence of a meeting before The Meeting, and buggery ensues. A tale in four parts, two of which are the same part, seen from differing angles</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a fortunate conjunction of [these two photographs](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SimEm7jDASBkYNWo-J5gh4wpjzuEmhJPRJpp291kVMw/preview). Neither of us being artists, we could not draw the delicious images which came to mind, and wrote this instead.
> 
> Thanks to Random_Nexus for the beta!

Watson has, in his own fashion, recounted the day that Stamford brought us together in the chemical laboratory at Barts, but I remember it rather differently than he, for reasons which were not to become apparent for some time afterwards. I had, at that time, been in London for just over two years, sandwiching classes in anatomy and other useful topics at the University between attempts to create my own unique profession. As a sometime-student I had several advantages I did not wish to entirely forgo, access to the library and laboratories and dissection rooms primary among them. But it was a pretense which I would not be able to sustain much longer. Father had already warned me that there would be no further allowance for tuition in the offing unless I undertook to select a more traditional occupation and get a degree to prove my years of education had not been wasted.

I was concentrating, therefore, on chemistry, in the knowledge that a practical test for the detection of haemoglobin would not only have some commercial value, but would also establish my reputation for expertise more firmly with the detectives of Scotland Yard. To that end I spent as much time as I could among the beakers, grateful that the laboratory was warmer and better-lit than the quarters I had come to despise, leaving only when I needed to time to think of an alternative combination of elements. During those respites I hunted for better lodgings, without success, since the acceptable rooms were well beyond my pocket. All in all, however, the experiments were going well, and I returned to them each day. On that particular afternoon I had just achieved the first, most important part of my goal by identifying a reagent which reacted to blood, but not rust, mud, or vegetable matter. I heard Stamford arriving with another fellow and found myself leaping up to share the news.

"Dr. Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," Stamford said, as I drew close enough to take the new arrival's hand. He was a tall, gaunt fellow, burnt by sun, and stiff with pain, but as I took his hand the name registered, and despite all of the changes which time and war had wreaked upon his person, I recognized him.

"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive," I told him, a moment before the puzzlement in his eloquent blue eyes informed me that the recognition was not mutual.

"How on earth do you know that?" he exclaimed. 

I withheld my mirth, as the explanation was not one I could possibly make in front of Stamford. "Never mind," I told him, and then dragged him back to the bench to show him my discovery. I did not mind in the least that he did not know me. After all, our first encounter had been in darkness, and no matter how enlightening it had been to me, I had excellent reasons to believe that it had not been so momentous on his part.

Still, there was time for him to remember. Especially if we were to take rooms together. I set myself to persuading him to do just that, with some success, and we made an appointment to meet on the following day. I cleaned up my chemicals and then set out to telegraph a message to our potential landlady, informing her of our planned visit. Afterwards, I celebrated with a luncheon in a cafe on Fieldgate Street, and considered my memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Proceed to Chapter Two to read Holmes's memory of their first meeting. Or, if you prefer to see the same scene from the good doctor's point of view, you may proceed to Watson's memory of the occasion in Chapter Three.


	2. Concerning the Value of Literature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we examine the recollections of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

I believe I was no more than nine years old when it became clear to me that there were certain things in life which held little value. Soppy romantical fiction, for one. This opinion I held to staunchly, much to the despair of my tutors, until my second year at University. I had, from time to time, been obliged to read love stories of various kinds, including some few which described the more salacious details in flowery but inexact (and unexciting) terms as they applied to the feminine sex. My views were rattled, however, when I was temporarily banned from classes after an unfortunate incident in the chemistry laboratory. Whilst in exile from class and library, I found myself rummaging through the uncertain leavings in the dormitory common room for fresh reading material and came across a rather unusual piece concerning two men which had a disconcerting effect upon my anatomy. I determined, therefore, to go down to London and lose my virginity, so as to discover whether or not the process was as fascinating in actuality as it was in prose.  
  
Having no classes to concern me I took the train the next day, despite the weather, and spent the first few hours attempting to determine just how to go about fulfilling my goal. There were any number of ladies who would have been willing, for a fee, to instruct me, but they interested me not at all. And while there were men I most certainly would have liked to have been instructed by, they appeared to have no interest in me.  
  
As the evening drew in, so did a noxious yellow fog. I had been going from pub to pub, and had struck up conversations in several of them with no real luck, but given the atrociousness of the weather I decided that further research was in order before making any further attempts. It was time to start back for the station. I was, at the time, deeper into the city than I had ever ventured before, but I confess to an unwarranted confidence in my ability to navigate the streets. I strode out into the night without asking directions, an omission which could have had severe consequences, for when I accidentally took a detour down a dark mews alley, I was accosted by several bulky men. None of them were taller than I, but all were a good deal more muscular, and they made it clear that they meant to relieve me not only of my virginity, but of my wallet as well.  
  
I attempted to fight them off, but I am quite sure that, left to my own devices, I should not have succeeded. I was in the process of coming to grips with that grim reality when another fellow flung himself into the fray.  
  
I have some skill in boxing, which I had been employing to good effect, but this new fellow appeared to be an expert in the art of the tackle and low blow. Within a few minutes my attackers were sprawled on the ground, and my rescuer was reaching for my hand. "Come on, quick!" he said, "Before they wake up!"  
  
He led me along the alley, pausing only to recover a suitcase, and then, when the sounds of pursuit echoed behind us in the fog, tugged me through a doorway into a stable, pulling down the bar to keep anyone from following.  
  
We listened for what felt like a very long time as the ruffians who had accosted me blundered their way through the fog trying to find us, but, after a desultory rattle, they gave up on the door leading to our refuge and went on.  
  
I slumped into the nearest pile of hay and allowed myself to groan. My left eyebrow was split, my right eye was going to be glorious in the morning, my arms were sore where two of them had tried to hold me while the others punched, and my ribs felt bruised. Almost instantly my rescuer came to join me. "Are you much hurt?" he whispered.  
  
"I think I've done something regrettable to my ribs," I admitted.  
  
"I've got some bruise balm in my kit. Take off your jacket and shirt and I'll see what I can do." He went back to collect his suitcase and then made his way across the stable to the far end, where a streetlamp outside had made an outline of another ill-fitting door, providing the only relief to shadows. The few horses in the stalls shifted but did not fret at his presence, but it was more than clear that he was no stablehand. In fact, I had drawn quite another conclusion.  
  
"Are you a doctor?" I was asking only for confirmation. There was something in that authoritative tone which precluded other possible occupations, and who else would carry a kit containing balm?  
  
"Only just," he replied, cracking the door open an inch or two to give himself enough light to see into his suitcase, and casting me a most spectacular grin. It was the first opportunity I had had of seeing his face.  
  
What I saw had the effect of very dramatically accelerating the speed of my fingers on my buttons.  
  
Fair hair above large eyes, the color of which I could not tell at that distance in such poor light, a straight nose, and a strong chin, all of it framed within a perfectly shaped face. Only the modern brush of a neat moustache reminded one that he hadn't stepped out of a painting from the Renaissance. I had just been rescued from a gang of roughs, in the night, by a Michaelangelo disguised as a physician, and one of his first acts had been to ask me to take off my shirt. There was a benevolent force in the universe after all.  
  
He found a smaller kit inside the larger case and tucked it up under his arm, closing the suitcase and then the door, which he barred as well, before fumbling his way back to me, purblind from even the mild glare to which he had been exposed. But he found me without difficulty, and I decided that despite his obvious advantages he had some reason for familiarity with our surroundings.  
  
"I've had my degree...oh, let's see, ten whole hours, now. I suppose you'll be my first patient as John H. Watson, M.D." He opened a jar from his kit and daubed a bit of its contents on my bruised cheekbone. Then his hands moved to my shoulder, and over my chest, cool and delicate but somehow anything but clinical. I have always believed in the power of mind over matter, and am rather proud that I managed not to shiver beneath his touch. The reaction taking place somewhat lower, however, no force of my mind could prevent. He asked if he were hurting me, pressing here and there against my ribs, and my breath caught as I answered.  
  
"Not too much."  
  
"You're very lucky," he said, "No cracked ribs, so far as I can tell."   
  
I realized that his breathing had accelerated. His hands were lingering and warmer too, and I detected a certain unmistakable quiver at his fingertips. "Yes," I agreed. "Very lucky." And then it occurred to me rather sharply that I might prefer it if he did happen to notice my instinctive reaction to his proximity. I allowed myself to shudder then, although I retained enough caution to give him my least memorable name. "I'm William," I said. "William Sm... Scott." The obvious alias would have been too obvious. And it is easier to remember the truth. "I'd like to thank you for coming to my rescue, Dr. Watson."  
  
"That's all right." He had more of his salve out now, and was spreading it gently over the worst of my bruises. His thumb brushed over my left nipple and I took a deep breath, my back straightening of its own accord. His hand paused for a moment, until he steadied it, and retreated into a commonplace question in a transparent attempt to calm himself. "Are you a student at the University?"  
  
"I'm a student," I said. "But not from any university in London. I came down by train this afternoon."  
  
"Then what brings you to London?" he asked, achieving a remarkable casual tone, considering that the state of his trousers had him shifting position to ease the strain on his buttons.   
  
I grinned, quite as certain of myself as I had been when I had first deduced the reason why our cook never seemed to be able to make a proper pie crust whenever the butcher's man made a delivery. "I came here to lose my virginity," I said, revelling in the sudden intake of his breath. "I haven't any use for it, you see."  
  
His tone wasn't casual at all when he managed to croak out, "A noble goal, to be sure."  
  
I put a hand on his thigh, just above the knee, where we could both pretend it wasn't there if it turned out that I had misread him. "Would you happen to have any notions about just where it might most effectively be mislaid?"  
  
He hesitated a moment longer. "It rather depends upon whom you want to mislay it?" he said, carefully, and his hand against my skin grew all the warmer.  
  
I shrugged, "Well, you are a medical man. You must have studied anatomy, yes?"  
  
"Yes." As if that had decided him he leaned forward of a sudden and banged against my nose with his own, readjusted and pressed his lips against mine. It was a kiss. Except that both our mouths were open, unlike any kiss I had ever exchanged with my mother as a child, and when I didn't protest his tongue darted out to tip against my teeth. The effect was immediate, and rather warming. All the way down.  
  
I grabbed for his coat with my right hand and sent my left exploring up his leg, an effort which would have gone better if he hadn't at the same moment shifted his weight forward and pinned me back into the hay, twisting my wrist far enough that I made a noise of discomfort. He instantly betrayed his experience in these matters by lifting up far enough to free my arm, and simultaneously insinuating both of his legs between my own. His mouth left mine, and he muttered an apology (which I vaguely recall acknowledging) before trailing his lips in a distracting fashion along my jaw. But I was determined not to lose sight of the goal. I worked my hand up his leg, therefore, to the bulge in his trousers in an attempt to gain some notion of the dimensions with which I should be dealing. I had just ascertained something of the size of matters when he nibbled at my ear, making my own trousers a good deal tighter in the process.  
  
"Slow down," he advised me, and added. "We've got all night. Unless you're in a hurry, that is?"  
  
The most delectable shivers were chasing themselves around my body, and at that moment I decided that howevermuch I might be momentarily satisfied by a quick finish to this excursion, an extended period of study would be far more desirable. "No," I moaned, and then hastily assembled my best pretense of sophistication, hoping he would not see through it. "That is, I've no reason to rush."  
  
He did, of course, and I could hear the smile in his voice as his fingers danced down my ribs and found my navel. Good heavens, who would have thought a navel could be so sensitive? "Then perhaps you might use your hands on my shirt-buttons, instead?" he said. "You seem to have the advantage of me in nudity."  
  
"If only in nudity," I replied, and gave over thinking there was any chance my previous excursion into prurient literature would allow me to anticipate what was to come. I would have to follow his lead -- but given that he appeared to be going in a direction I approved of, why not?   
  
I started on his buttons, as ordered, and almost immediately realized that I would have to deal with his cravat. This would have been simpler if I had the presence of mind to remember how to untie the cloth backwards, and I took care, not wanting to accidentally strangle my mentor. By the time I had it undone I found myself wanting to kiss him again, and tugged at the silk in the hopes he would be willing to undertake the exercise a second time. That he did I found entirely gratifying, and educational too. It had not occurred to me that a facility with words implied a degree of control over lips, teeth, and tongue -- at least not until that moment. I undertook to prove the question with a good deal of enthusiasm.   
  
Kissing also gave me time to consider the mechanics of buttons, when done back to front. When I had satisfactorily planned the maneuver, I let loose his hair (although I didn't remember taking hold of it) and went back to disrobing him. The waistcoat was easy, the shirt less so. By the time I had the placket opened he was pressing his lips to my collarbone and it took an exercise of will to remember how to say, "Shirt." and "Off." in nearly the same sentence.   
  
He leaned back on his heels, then, and pulled off his shirt, looking down at me with an expression I could barely see in the gloom. Well, no, perhaps I could have read his expression if I could have taken my eyes (or hands) off of his torso. I had, in fact, seen examples of the male form which might have matched his, but only as portrayed in marble. His shoulders were broad, his muscles so well-defined that the shape of them was apparent even under those conditions. I ran my hand up the center of his chest, ruffling the light hair, like a blind man attempting to determine the dimensions of an object. When my fingertips moved past his nipple he gave a happy moan and put a hand down on either side of me, leaning down to continue the explorations he had begun with his mouth.   
  
"Wait." I said. "Wait. What about our trousers?"  
  
"Patience is a virtue," he said sententiously, and then I felt him grin against my breast before he moved his mouth to one nipple and suckled it in a way that left me nearly incapable of categorizing the sensation. "Fortunately, what we're engaged in is a vice." He pushed away from me again and began to unfasten his belt. "Race you."  
  
I could not let a challenge like that go unmet.  
  
Fortunately, I wore no belt, and my braces had been off my shoulders ever since he began to deal with my injuries. With that head start I was able to undo the few necessary buttons and skin my trousers down my legs, allowing my stiff member to extend to a more comfortable length. I'd got them past my knees when my companion launched himself at me. We fell back into the hay, skin against skin, except where our trousers were still in the way. And he was wriggling his further free.  
  
"Cheat!" I managed, because my hands were far too busy finding out more about his chest to worry about the race, and my cock -- oh, heavens -- it was discovering that being compressed in this fashion was a far better thing than freedom. But he only grinned.  
  
"You've neglected your boots."  
  
"No more than you," I answered quickly.  
  
He squirmed back, drawing his erection along mine as he went and leaving me holding my breath, before kneeling at my feet and tackling my bootlaces. In a moment he had them undone, my boots and stockings off. All whilst I lay in the hay and wondered if it were possible to be overwhelmed with sensations.  
  
"Extraordinary," I whispered.  
  
"What is?" he responded, tucking my stockings into one of my boots and setting both boots near a support post where they could be found.  
  
"I would not have thought that the removal of boots, of all things..." I could not express it. The simple truth was that removing my shirt had not nearly stimulated me so, and I could not for the life of me understand what it was about shoes which was so very different.  
  
"Ah, possibly you might have had some suspicions about this, however..." he bent to kiss my ankle, just below the knobby bit, and then started to work his way upwards. A marvelous feeling indeed, were it not that I was being distracted from below.  
  
"Doctor," I said, rather plaintively, "that is undoubtedly rather pleasant, but I suspect I should like it better were I not being so infernally poked."  
  
"Not yet you aren't," he said, and I am willing to testify that his grin was audible. Then he removed himself a bit and pretended innocence. "Oh, you mean the hay. Forgive me my dear fellow." He tugged me up onto my feet and I watched as he began to weave our discarded shirts and jackets into a kind of nest atop the bed of hay. I helped, as best I could, and then skinned out of my trousers and added them to one edge.  
  
"And now I can take off your boots," I said with satisfaction. "Lie down."  
  
He stretched out across our intermingled clothing, his trousers still trapped between his knees and his boots, and his prick jutting up from his groin. It had a slight cant to the left, as if it had become bent that way from his usual choice of trouser leg in which to place it, and in a better light he might have looked ridiculous. Not to me, however. I heard his soft chuckle and realized that I had not yet had enough of his mouth, and certainly hadn't yet had enough of the way it had felt when our two cocks rubbed against each other. I flung myself atop of my companion without a second thought, finding his mouth with mine as I knelt with one leg on either side of him and moved my groin over his in such haste that he grabbed for my hips to slow me, groaning out something useless about his boots.  
  
"Hang the boots," I told him, having found reason to work all the harder in the delectable thrills that were running up and down my spine. My hips seemed to know more about the matter than I did, were moving quite of their own accord, but I wanted more pressure, as if I could grind myself right into him somehow. I pulled his hands down to my buttocks in hope he would provide that pressure, but he, to my astonishment, slid down the hay until his head was just below my swollen cock.  
  
A moment later, I knew, without doubt, that I should have spent more time in search of informative literature. Either that, or I should have looked up more of the words I did not know in some friendly dictionary, because the last thing I ever expected was for him to take the tip of my erection into his mouth. I seem to remember thinking "Well, this is the advantage of seducing a man of experience," but after that my capacity for rationalization faded rapidly. I think I said something. I know I did, in fact, for I was painfully aware that I was not tending to  _his_  needs, and the story I had read had had both men coming to outrageously sentimental glory simultaneously in each other's hands, but he did not stop, or wait, and when he reached up to caress my balls I lost all control of myself spectacularly.  
  
It was much, much better than any orgasm I have ever managed on my own. The warmth of his mouth seemed somehow to have transferred itself all through my body. I swear, he drank me down like mother's milk, and turned my bones to liquid at the same time, and I could scarce move until he manoeuvred back up so as to bring himself face to face with me, with my backside resting against his knees, my toes curled into the fabric of his neglected trousers, and his cock all hot and hard between us as he kissed me.  
  
His mouth was bitter with the taste of me, but I wanted it all the same, and yet somehow the kiss was still enough to unstring me at last. I collapsed against him and let him arrange us side by side on the hay as I struggled to find words. "I cannot begin to... I do not know how to..." He had confounded me, and I knew it.  
  
He kissed me again, so sweetly that I wanted to thank him, and yet I knew that I did not have it in me to emulate his gesture. For one thing, I did not think my mouth would stretch so far. When he asked me if I would trust him I'm afraid I let my dismay show, for he grew all the more gentle as he stroked my side. "I very much would like to bugger you, if you find the prospect agreeable. That was what you meant, wasn't it, when you said you'd come to London to lose your virginity?" His hand continued down, pausing meaningfully at my backside before continuing down to my thigh.  
  
"It must have been," I answered, as little sense as it made to his question. In truth, I suspect I had rather been thinking about the matter in terms of doing what he was suggesting to him. Fucking, after all, consisted of a cock going into a hole, and when I had been considering holes I had not thought once of mouths (though I would never make  _that_  error again!) I owed him a release, and I knew it.  _And it must work,_  I thought.  _There's a word for it, after all._  But I could think of one problem. "Shouldn't you ought to take your boots off first?"  
  
He burst into laughter, throwing his head back with it, until I felt myself incredibly callow for even considering the practicalities. But in a moment he had brought himself under control again and he brushed his hand against my face. "Certainly," he said, cheerfully, "Would you care to see to it or shall I?"  
  
"Oh, I will," I answered, relieved and glad to make myself of use. Relieved too, that my preceptor appeared not to object to foolish questions. Which reminded me of one. "I still don't understand why it felt so good when you took off mine," I told him.   
  
He hemmed and hawed a bit, but told me that there wasn't much out of the common which mightn't strike one as sensual. "I don't suppose you'd think of your back, for example, as an area abounding in lascivious possibilities? But that'd be before you've felt a mouth on your shoulder blades."  
  
The vivid image--if a foretaste of a sensation can be described as an image--returned life to my exhausted member. A mouth on my shoulder blade? Particularly  _his_  clever mouth? But he was waiting for a reply, and my fingers had finished with the laces of one boot. "Er. Um. Yes. And feet are more sensitive than backs," I suggested, running my fingertips across his sole once I had pulled away boot and sock.  
  
I expected him to respond as if he'd been tickled, but he did not laugh, only squirmed under the touch in a way that was eloquent of just how very much he'd liked the touch. His voice was rougher when he continued his lecture. "And there's something deliciously perverse about feet in particular. To do with power, of course." Heaven knows I would have paid more attention to my professors if they had taken on such a tone in their lectures! Although, perhaps I would have missed some of the meaning of the words, because I was still trying to grasp his intent when he sat up and said, "Though I wouldn't count out backs just yet, where sensitivity is concerned. Not until... well..." He trailed his fingers from the nape of my neck down my spine, and I found myself thinking of ridiculous poetical things like butterfly wings at the very delicate way he did it. The firmer touch he gave the base of my spine had an undeniable effect in contrast, though. I was brought back to myself by the feeling of his shoelace--which I had pulled far too vigorously--cutting across a roughened place on one knuckle. Not that I cared for that! He lay back again, and I felt his eyes upon me for all the darkness.  
  
"Perhaps if you would be willing to demonstrate further?" I got out.  
  
I could hear his smile in his voice as he said. "One thing at a time, William." It made me wish that I'd given him my whole name, just to hear it drawled in so luxurious a fashion. His hand was on his cock, stroking it into even greater enthusiasm. "Boots first. Then I'd be more than happy to... demonstrate further."  
  
Reminded, I attacked his remaining boot, discovering to my dismay that I had made the laces knot. I picked at the knot quickly, shouted, "There!" when it finally came undone and pulled away his remaining clothes with haste, and as much care as my increasing excitement would allow. Something fell from his pocket into the hay, and I resolved to look for it for him. Later.   
  
"Amazing what a little incentive can do," he said, rising to catch me at the same moment as I leapt forward to position myself atop of him. Our heads struck, and I was reminded painfully of my bruises, but I couldn't help but laugh, especially when he kissed the bump as tenderly as the mother of a wailing infant.   
  
He kissed me again once we were laying together. I'd have been glad to continue doing so, but he had other ideas. "Now. The subject was backs, I believe." He took my shoulders and turned me around, so that he was behind me, breathing down my neck. It made the gooseflesh rise all over me, but it made other things rise too.  
  
He pressed against me, his cock between our bodies hotter than all the rest, and restless. I remembered him touching himself and wondered whether or not I should be trying to persuade myself to an equally excited state. "Am I meant to be doing anything?"  
  
His hands were at my sides, but his mouth was against my nape. "Only just to relax," he told me, and kissed the place where my neck rose from my shoulder. He lowered himself a few inches and began to fulfill his promise to demonstrate upon my shoulder blade, using not only his tongue but his teeth as well. I have never felt less like relaxing in my life, but I tried! "Tell me what you've thought of, when you've imagined this," he commanded, and his mouth found one of my vertebra.   
  
That would have required words, and I had a very poor command of them just then. Nor did I have any desire to admit to him that I had been so immersed in my studies that I had seldom taken the time to consider this particular activity in anything but a functional light. He kept at what he was doing for a while, and then persisted. "Tell me what's in your mind when you take yourself in hand."  
  
_That I shouldn't like to be caught at it_ , sprung into my head, but I managed to keep that regrettable sentiment from continuing out of my mouth. That it relieved an awkward pressure, perhaps, at best, and was better than attempting to make sense of some female. "I...I'm not sure." That confession I could make. "Most of the books have girls in them. And you're definitely not a girl. I expect I've been wondering if it felt different to have someone else take me in hand." At least, that's what I'd been wondering ever since reading the story which had driven me to London.  
  
"No," he said, smiling against my back. "I am not a girl." He was working his way along my spine, taking care to pay attention to each vertebra enroute. His hand came around me and caressed my chest and belly before finding my cock, which twitched unmistakably at the contact. I took a hold of the cloth of our interlaced shirts with one hand, grasping the linen as if it were a lifeline, as the other hand hovered uncertainly over my body, waiting for permission to do more than tremble.  
  
His own hand moved on, having ascertained my excitement, and began to stroke along my thigh as his lips moved even further down. He'd reached the small of my back, and kissed me there. "And when did you come to understand that female charms were not what you preferred?" he murmured, and then caught my free hand and brought it back to touch his most decidedly unfeminine characteristic. "Or is it merely coincidence that I happened to be the most promising prospect in your programme of debauchery?"  
  
I had never seen the charms of females in the first place, and might have said so, except for the sheer distraction of knowing that the pulse of the blood within his cock, so hot beneath my fingertips, was there for me, and now. "I like coincidences," I told him, my own pulse racing, and the breaths coming quicker. "They tell you all sorts of things."  
  
"And what does this coincidence tell you about me?" he asked, moving away from my hand to transfer his lips to first one hip and then the other, where I later found he had added bruises to my count. I cannot count them as damage. Not considering the reaction which spread outward to every extremity. There was sweat springing out on my back, for I felt the night air attempting to cool it.  
  
"That you've done this before," I squeaked, and then quickly added. "Which is good, because I don't think it's the sort of thing you can learn out of books."  
  
He laughed, and said, "That's very true. It isn't the sort of thing you can learn from books." Then, much to my dismay, he left off paying attentions to me in favor of rummaging in his bag.   
  
I propped myself up on my elbows, the better to engage in the useless effort of attempting to follow his actions through the darkness. "What are you doing?"  
  
He found what he was looking for and came back, turning me, so that once again I had my back to him. I could hear him unscrewing a jar, and wondered what it could contain until the faint, unmistakable odour of petroleum jelly drifted to my nose. "There are certain advantages to books, of course," he said calmly. "They can give one the most marvelous ideas. Have you ever read Catullus?"  
  
_Catullus_? I had to think for a moment to identify the name, for it was familiar to me only from discussions of literature which had seemed dull compared to the intricacies of organic chemistry. "Poetry isn't really my field of study," I said somewhat diffidently, although a moment's thought led me to consider that the scan of the lines had nothing to do with the content of the material. "Is that the only book I should read?" There was something inevitable about the petroleum jelly which wrapped knots of mingled anticipation and uncertainty within me. I could  _hear_  him slicking his cock with the stuff, the slide of skin against skin and the soft, faintly rude release of air bubbles caught in the viscous balm.  
  
He lectured on, and although his voice was growing deeper and rougher in a way that betrayed that his thoughts were not entirely upon the topic. Classical examples, engraving themselves upon my memory until I could cite them in my sleep.  _Catullus, Caesar, Alcibiades, Socrates,_  and so forth, though his expectation that I should be able to construe the Latin he quoted when he was kissing my lips and eyelids and ear indicated a belief in my scholarship that I was determined to justify at some future date. _Alexander, Hephaestion..._  He took a greased finger and ran it down the crevice between my buttocks, encouraging me to widen the space between my legs and make room for him.  _Achilles, Patroclus..._  The finger toyed with the muscle of my anus, hot and slick, and any fears I had remaining grew quite insignificant. I could scarce breathe, waiting for more. But he had ceased speaking, seemed to be waiting for some kind of response.  
  
"I shall have to pay more attention to the classics in future," I managed.  
  
He made a soft sound and slipped his fingertip inside the entrance he'd been investigating. I found myself paying very close attention indeed. It was quite the most peculiar sensation I had ever known, but it promised more  _outré_  sensations still. My companion leaned his mouth closer to my ear. "I need for you to push yourself back against my finger as I press inside you," he said, and kissed my neck. "It will be easier for you if you exhale as I do. Do you understand?"  
  
"Exhale," I echoed obediently. "Yes." And then, because that seemed far too meek and unadorned, I added, "Yes, I understand."  
  
"That's good," he said. "It may be a bit uncomfortable, but it oughtn't to hurt. Just try to relax." I think he waited for the sound of my breath leaving me, then, for the next thing I knew he had inserted his finger as far as it would go, and I was fighting with the desire to clench my entire body around it with all my strength. And breaking his metacarpals would have been poor payment in compensation for an action which had me nearly as hard as ever I had been in my life for the second time within a half an hour.  
  
He kept the lower hand very still, as if he knew just how odd I found that presence within me, but with the other hand he eased my shoulders away from my ears and turned my face to meet his. "Come here," he said, kissing me once, and once again before commanding, "Tell me how it feels."  
  
_It feels like you've stuck your finger up my arse,_  I thought, for any romantic metaphor he might have preferred had been struck clean out of my mind. I doubted he would appreciate so bald a description, however, and sought refuge in a different sort of assessment. "Not bad," I stammered. "Strange though. I...can't think of anything to compare it to. Am I doing it right?"  
  
He made a small not-truly-impatient sound. "I misphrased the question. What I meant was, how do you feel? I won't move until you're ready, I swear it, but it will be a fight against your own instincts to begin with. A fight you cannot win if you panic."  
  
"I never panic," I told him immediately. If I could keep my head after having inadvertently igniting a wall of the chemistry lab and deal with the conflagration unassisted before the rest of the class had finished rushing about like headless chickens, I was not going to be discommoded by a merely physical conundrum. On the other hand, I had  _known_  which reagents to use in that instance, and had had them available lest the reaction had been more vigorous than the glassware could withstand. In this case, I needed more instruction. "What... what  _precisely_..."  
  
"All you've really to do," he said, so close to my ear that the feel of his breath raised gooseflesh on places in my skin where I would not have thought it possible, "is remember that your interior muscles are just as much at your mind's control as any others in your body. We're so used to let them work on instinct that it's not easy to teach them to obey, at first. But I promise you, the exercise will be very, very well worth it." His free hand soothed my stomach and abdomen, the heat of his touch accomplishing more than my mental commands to relax had done, but like priming the pump, it served as a reminder of the possible. "You  _will_  enjoy this, if you can only convince your body that I'm not going to hurt you. And keep breathing. It will be much easier if you keep breathing."  
  
_That_  bit advice I could use immediately, and did, drawing air into my lungs and letting it free as I attempted to follow his instruction. And it worked. I could feel the difference. But there was one misunderstanding I could clear up in return. "If I thought you were going to hurt me I'd've run for it long before this."  
  
His moustache ran over the pinna of my ear as he smiled. "Good," he said, and I relaxed my grip on his lower hand a bit more. He brought the other around in front of my mouth, to brush his fingers against my lip. "In the meanwhile, would you mind very much doing a little something for me?"  
  
I kissed the fingers before me, but asked, "Why?" out of some intimation in his question that he was not merely in search of a kissed hand.  
  
"Because while I'm buggering you, William," he said, in a voice full of promise, as I moved my mouth along his fingertips, "and I assure you, that will be enjoyable enough all on its own, the thought had occurred to me that it might be still more pleasant for you if I were to stroke your cock in the meanwhile." That suggestion had such merit that I found myself leaning back against him, "And that will feel even better if your tongue has crossed my palm once or twice beforehand." I sent my tongue out quickly, liking that idea even better. "Now, just remember how that feels. Just like that."  
  
_How what feels?_  I thought, and then realized that I had accomplished the state of internal relaxation I'd been seeking. His finger was still there, obviously, but it no longer felt so invasive. "Aha! Now I see it. Or feel it, rather." It was simple, now that I knew what I was after.  
  
"May I move a bit now?" he asked.  
  
I tested my control first, tightening around him and then making myself return to the more agreeable state. "Certainly," I told him, and took hold of the hand near my mouth. I grinned against his palm, thinking impudently that it was my turn to remind him that he had promised other things. "But only if you were serious about your hand."  
  
He laughed. "Quite serious!" He left that hand in my charge, and I began to lave it with my tongue as he slid the finger in my arse nearly all the way out before bringing it home again.   
  
He did this several times, and once I had ascertained the rhythm of the process I imitated it by drawing his middle finger into my mouth and moving in similar fashion. I could feel his cock moving against my thighs restlessly in response. The poor thing was neglected, I thought first, and then considered its bulk in relation to the finger I had already become accustomed to.   
  
"Perhaps you might..." I wasn't sure how to explain what I was thinking without demonstration so I reached back to take hold of his cock. " _This_  is a good deal larger than one finger," I pointed out, exploring it with care not to diminish it. I had some misgivings, and although none of them serious were enough to discourage me, it was better to ask. "Will it fit? Or should you add another finger now?" I couldn't think of any other way in which he might enlarge my opening.  
  
"Very soon," he promised. "But not before I've done  _this_." And then his finger pressed directly upon a point in my interior anatomy that I had never isolated in sensation before.   
  
I think I said something. Certainly, he asked me what I'd said. I have no memory of words, however, just an all encompassing bright moment of pleasure that was quite different from anything -- including orgasm -- that I had ever yet experienced.  
  
And he'd stopped.   
  
"Do that again!" I commanded.  
  
But he was not going to concede his authority, and merely said, "One request at a time, my dear boy. You asked me to do this first, I think." He pressed a second finger into my interior and I made room for it as best I could, remembering to breathe this time. Both fingers were moving in and out, brushing only accidentally at the place where I most wanted a more deliberate contact. "Now, remind me what else it is you wanted?"  
  
I gave up all hope of directing his actions and resorted to persuasion, trying to make the most of my fingertips wandering over the hot velvet hardness of his cock. "Again.  _Please_ , again."  
  
He was trembling too, I swear it. "What, this?" Somehow he managed to catch that most sensitive area between both fingers and I saw fire beneath my eyelids with pleasure of it.  
  
"Yes!" He was moving his fingers again, allowing me the chance to breathe. "What  _is_  that?" I asked.  
  
"The single most perfect spot in the entire male anatomy," he said, stroking it again, his voice growing rougher. "The reason why I can safely promise that my cock in your arse is going to be just as marvelous a sensation for you as it is for me."  
  
All of which I had deduced readily; it was additional information I required. "How am I going to look it up if I don't know its  _name_?" I cried.  
  
" _Prostate_  is the word you want," he growled, pulling his fingers past it roughly as he took them away from me. I tried to impale myself on them again, pushing my hips down, and he obliged me, drawing an inarticulate shout from somewhere deep in my belly. But then his fingers were gone again. "On your hands and knees," he ordered gruffly, sitting back, so that I could no more touch him than he was touching me.  
  
I lay there, trying to remember how to assemble words. He took my hand and tugged on it until I had managed to reach a kneeling position, to one side of his own kneeling form. Then he put his hands upon my face, one of them damp with my own saliva, the other still slick and smelling of my own musk, to begin a kiss as rough as his earlier kisses had been gentle. I wanted the kiss, let him bite at my lower lip, but I wanted more too. Thank God he seemed to understand that. "William," he intimated, and I struggled to remember that  _I_  was the one he was addressing. "I cannot wait any longer. If you do not get on your hands and knees very, very shortly, I will find myself in no state to be buggering anyone." He went on from there, something about choices and methodology and accommodation, but I had finally grasped his meaning and I was more than ready to follow his directions.  
  
I gave him one more kiss, and then put my hands down into the straw, stretching my back out before him. "Like this?" I asked.  
  
"Yes," he growled, taking position behind me. "You are ready?"  
  
I nodded frantically, hoping he could see the gesture in the gloom, and taking deep breaths in anticipation of what was to come next.  
  
And it  _did_  come next. He was being excessively cautious, much to my frustration, just pressing in a bare inch or so, and I wanted  _all_  of him! "Am I hurting you?" he asked. I knew he didn't mean the grip he had on my hips (which was painful enough on top of my bruises), and I would have just told him "no" were it not that I had a question of my own.  
  
"How?" I asked, and then took another deep breath, "can you possibly have  _stopped_?"  
  
"Thank God," he breathed, and pushed the rest of the way in, until his balls were bang up against mine. And then he stopped  _again_  somehow, and waited for God only knows what. When I lost patience and tried to press back against him, making a noise deep in my throat, however, he accepted the signal and drew back only to rock forward into me again with more speed and better force.  
  
At that angle, his cock dragged a line of pleasure across my prostate and I could do nothing but react. "Again!" I cried, and this time he obliged me, with such enthusiasm that I was reduced to whispering my plea for more. He ceased teasing then, and began fucking in earnest. His hand on my shoulderblade was all that kept me from writhing wildly with the sheer sensation of it. As it was I tried to move to meet him, the sweat springing out all over my skin. I wanted him to take hold of my cock, as he'd promised, but he was so engrossed that I thought perhaps he had forgotten. "Please," I gasped instead between poundings, "would it ruin things if I were to touch myself?"  
  
Reminded, he slid the hand from my hips down to my cock, and proved that he could perform two tasks at once. I closed my eyes and bowed my head, holding onto the hay with all my might. My knees were under a strange pressure with his legs between mine, as if it were not only his cock trying to split me into two happy halves, and it made keeping my balance on the uneven hay a distraction I could not help but wish would go away. I was shaking like a leaf, more than ready to come to a second peak. He leaned over me then, and breathed against my neck. "When you come off, I want you to scream for me."  
  
That seemed foolish. It would frighten the horses if nothing else, and alarm any passersby. It also seemed like an incredibly attractive notion. I clung to the practicalities with difficulty. "Someone will..." I began, but he hushed me.  
  
"No one will hear." He was very confident of his assertion, and I remembered his obvious familiarity with this venue. God knew I was not the first one he'd fucked here. "For me."   
  
All semblance of control departed me. I couldn't even keep my arms straight anymore, and had he not transferred both his hands to holding onto my hips my legs might have collapsed as well. The new position changed the strike of his cock against my prostate, and I vibrated like a bell being struck by the clapper, my nose full of the smell of hay, and my eyelids full of sparks of light. Even without a hand on my cock I was near bursting, and burst I did, shouting as he'd asked, despite any reservations I might have had. The horses startled, predictably, although their indignant whinnies sounded distant to me as waves of astonishing ferocity wracked my body.   
  
They diminished at last, but he was still fucking me, despite my incipient bonelessness. Not for long, however. Now it was his turn to spasm against me, and cry out, words having abandoned him as thoroughly as they had done me. He collapsed against me, and I did not have the strength to support him, and so we both ended up sprawling. His cock withered inside me, until he finished pulling it away with moist sound that under other circumstances might have seemed objectionable, and now sounded to me like music. I closed my eyes and decided then and there that I would leave my university and come to London, the better to undertake more advanced studies in anatomy.   
  
We lay entangled, half on and half off the disordered nest of our clothing. His breath came deep and slow and even, as if he might fall asleep if he were left alone, and my own pulse had slowed so remarkably from its fever pitch that I found myself contemplating doing much the same thing. The horses, still indignant about the noise we had made, were stamping and shifting around, looking to resume their own slumbers. Had not the church bells begun to measure out the hour, who knows whether we should have moved 'til morning?  
  
Unfortunately, my ability to count, and think, had returned in sufficient measure to warn me that move I must. I pushed up onto my elbows. "I need to go catch my train," I told my companion. I hadn't money enough to remain in London for the whole night and still break my fast in the morning.  
  
"Hmm?" He raised his head and then pushed himself up abruptly. "Blast. Me too. They're expecting me at Netley."  
  
"Netley?" Numbers I could manage, geography was filling in more slowly.  
  
"Down by Portsmouth. Training school for Army surgeons," he answered, beginning to collect his things.   
  
I sat up and began to disentangle our shirts. "You're going into the Army?" I asked, feeling frustrated. "You won't be in London?"  
  
"Afraid not." For a moment his hand came up to touch my face before falling away again. "Not that you'll have any trouble finding other partners. Just go to the Three Bells on Starcross street, or the Cock in the Cauldron on Duke's Road."  
  
My fingers found a mend in the linen I didn't recognize. "Here, I think this one's yours," I said, passing him one of the shirts. "The Three Bells or the Cock in the Cauldron," I repeated, so as to fix the names in my memory.   
  
"Yes. The students with inclinations our way tend to visit those two pubs rather than the others." He passed me my trousers. "It's best to steer clear of the rent boys in the East End. They're a poxy lot. Not that the fine gentlemen from the West End are much better. At least you're safe from anyone damnfool enough to think fucking a virgin will cure syphilis. And no," he added when I went very still, "I haven't got it. Or anything else you have to worry about.  _Primum non nocere_ , remember? If you're sore in the morning -- and you will be! -- it's just because you've been using muscles in new ways. A hot bath should ease you." I shifted position, for the reminder only highlighted the knowledge that he was right about the soreness between my legs. Still, it wasn't any worse than the bruising I'd got in the fight, and he was no doubt correct about the bath.  
  
My companion was getting dressed much more efficiently than I was, no matter how much I wished to prolong the conversation. "I can see that my education in this area has only just begun," I grumbled.  
  
"There  _are_  books," he told me cheerfully. "Medical titles, for the most part. And Catullus. But practical studies are more fun. Just remember not to get caught."  
  
That much I knew, although it was not an area of criminology that had held much interest for me before this night. I snorted. "And yet, if I were to go out and impregnate half-a-dozen young females, no one would do more than say 'tut tut'."  
  
"They'd do more than that," my companion laughed. He was almost completely attired, and I was nowhere near that state. "Just be discreet, whoever you choose, and you'll be all right."  
  
"I'll manage," I asserted firmly. I wasn't going to have a complete stranger -- no matter how intimate we had been physically! -- thinking that I could not handle myself.  
  
"Good lad," he said, pulling on his boots.   
  
"Will you be at Netley long?" I asked, politely.  
  
"A few months. Then on to India. And you'll be back at school. Have you long before you take your degree?"  
  
"Longer than I like."  
  
He laughed. "London's not the only place in the world where a man can get buggered, you know," he said. "There's bound to be a few odd sods wandering around your school."  
  
This was no doubt true -- one of them had obviously left that story in my dormitory. I felt myself cheering at the prospect, although I still intended to remove to London as soon as possible. "Very odd, no doubt."  
  
He stood, and I stood too, although I was still lacking my shoes, to follow him to his suitcase. "I have to go," he said, as he knelt to put his smaller kit back into the larger case. He looked up at me, and in the slightly better light at this end of the barn I could finally see his expression. His mouth was open, just enough to make me remember with a thrill how very clever he could be with his tongue. But if he was distracted, it was in a different direction than my thoughts were tending. "Are you even going to be able to see out of that eye come morning?" he wondered.  
  
I touched the swelling gingerly. "Possibly not."  
  
"Steak," he said. "A raw one. Although a cold compress would be just as effective." He got to his feet and took my chin in one hand, turning the bruise to the dim light. "If your cheekbone were broken we'd know it by now."  
  
"I've had worse in a boxing match," I told him. "I'm all right." I wanted to kiss him, just once more, before he left, so I took hold of his coat and pulled him close. "Thank you," I said, and put my lips to his.  
  
He made a noise against my mouth - a protest perhaps - and then gave in and kissed me thoroughly before taking my shoulders and putting me carefully away from him. "You're welcome," he said gruffly. "But I can't be late. Goodbye, William. The cabstand is to the right, and up at the top of the street when you're ready."  
  
And then he was gone.  
  
I took a moment to compose myself, and then went back to my boots. Whilst I was pulling them on, I remembered the object that had fallen out of the doctor's pockets, back when we were undressing, and I spent several minutes working methodically through the hay in hopes that what I would find would be of enough value to warrant locating him again. All I found was a matchbox, though, three quarters full of matches. I lit one, and found the lantern which depended from one of the support beams, but further investigation revealed nothing more. The churchbells rang out the quarter hour, reminding me that I too had a train to catch. I unbolted the back door, to leave it in the state it had been when we arrived, snuffed out the lantern, made my farewells to the sleepy horses, and headed out into the fog, the doctor's matchbox tucked safely into my pocket. I might never see him again, I thought, but at least I had a souvenir.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like to read Watson's version of events, go on to Chapter Three. If you prefer the Epilogue, proceed to Chapter Four.


	3. A Journey Interrupted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a young doctor treats his first patient.

When one hears from the mouth of a dark alley the unmistakable sounds of three men or more wreaking havoc on a fellow specimen of the human creature, there are some who would advise a speedy departure from a business clearly not one's own. That would, perhaps, have been the sensible thing to do, but I have never found it easy to turn my back on those in need, whether good sense advises it or no, and in those days, I was very, very young. Fortunately, I was also at the height of my rugby days, and no mean opponent. Fortunately, too, the victim I found myself defending was in no wise so helpless as that noun implies. Between the two of us, it was scarcely more than a few minutes before the four--there were four, as it turned out--ruffians were very effectively subdued, and I was dusting London mud off of the fellow to whose aid I had come.  
  
Our little adventure had produced but a minimal effect upon me. I had taken one good hit to the stomach, a lucky blow by an otherwise unskilled opponent, but apart from that I seemed more or less intact. My companion had not fared quite so well. He would have a black eye at the very least, and had taken a nasty crack to the chest that made me fear for his ribs. That had been amply repaid, however; the fellow had a right hook of which I should certainly  _not_  have liked to be on the wrong side. All four of our assailants lay sprawled on the pavement, but two were engaged in a practice which resembled groaning, and a third showed a certain inclination to stir. I had no desire to hang about long enough for a second encounter. "Come on, quick!" I urged, pulling my comrade by the arm. "Before they wake up!"   
  
As I led him deeper down the alley and through the dim backstreets of London, I noted as much about my companion as the limited light would allow. He was young, for a start--younger than I, though perhaps not by much--and tall and thin in a way that would have required the adjective "gangling" if he did not move with such grace. His hair was a dark blot on a darker night, his features obscured in the fog but for the high forehead and the strong line of the nose. His clothes were well-tailored though not exceptionally costly, and he followed me with no sign of trepidation. I traced my way through a long series of alleys and mews, twisting more or less at random; we were not far from the University, and I had traveled these paths many times, often after a good many more drinks than I'd had tonight.   
  
The fog made things a bit more difficult, but I caught a glimpse of a door I knew at last and pulled my young companion through it, sliding down the bar in time to prevent our pursuers from realizing that the door had ever been open at all. The tired cabhorses in the stalls behind us barely shifted position, all of them being far too accustomed to the arrival of couples seeking a trysting place.   
  
It wasn't until silence once more reigned in the alleyway beyond the door that the boy beside me slid down to the nearest convenient resting place and groaned with pain. I quickly went over to kneel beside him and ask if he were hurt.  
  
"I think I've done something regrettable to my ribs," he vouchsafed with youthful insouciance.  
  
I had no doubt that someone had done something regrettable, even if he weren't the one. "Take off your jacket and your shirt," I told him wryly. "I've got some bruise balm in my kit." I always carried it--a good salve being useful for far more things than soothing a few rugby bruises. I crossed the room to where I'd dropped my suitcase, and rummaged out my medical kit.  
  
"Are you a doctor?" he inquired.  
  
"Only just," I told him, grinning. I opened the door a crack to permit the light of the streetlamp in, for just time enough to recover my balm. The moment I was done, however, I shut and bolted it again. I didn't think it likely that his attackers would come back this way, but there was no sense inviting trouble.  
  
I was utterly blinded when I turned back towards him, but I knew this particular stable well. It was a favorite  _rendezvous_  location for young students at the University, in fact--well off the main road, out of earshot of most listeners--and particularly for men of a certain kind. And here I was, groping my way towards a young fellow who'd appeared, from the brief glances I'd managed earlier, to be quite striking, spread out for me half-naked in the hay. My trousers began to grow quite uncomfortable. I did my best not to betray that, however.  
  
"I've had my degree... oh, let's see, about ten hours now. You'll be my first patient as John H. Watson, M.D." The title felt strange but oddly comfortable slipping between my lips, like the name of an old friend whom one has not seen in years. I helped him ease the cloth away from his shoulder and then ran my hands carefully along his rib cage, pressing now and then to check for damage to the bones. There was a fair bit of swelling, but he seemed to have escaped any worse injury. "Does that hurt?"  
  
"Not too much." It was difficult to entirely believe him on that score. Something in the proud set of his shoulders told me that he was the sort of man likely to treat his own pain as a weakness, and the trembling of his limbs--which I would not have seen even from that distance, even in much better light, but could sense in my fingertips--belied the assertion.  
  
"You're very lucky," I commented, as I reached for the salve. "No cracked ribs, so far as I can tell."  
  
When my cool, slick fingers touched his skin, he hissed just a bit, and his breath caught. I swallowed hard. What sort of doctor was I, I lectured myself in my own mind? It had been an entirely natural reaction to the cold. It was no reason at all for the erection I was fighting to grow still more uncomfortable. It did not mean anything... "Yes," he murmured. "Very lucky."  
  
Abruptly he shuddered, far more dramatically than he had allowed himself before. A question as to whether there had been an increase in pain was lingering somewhere between my uvula and my lips when he interrupted me preemptively with, "I'm William. William Sm... Scott." He was lying, I realized at once.  _Why_  was he lying? "I'd like to thank you for coming to my rescue."  
  
"That's all right." His skin was perfect. I noticed it without meaning to notice it, and cursed myself for it a moment afterward. His skin was perfect, and the muscles beneath it stronger than they ought to have been in such a wiry fellow. I would like to say that I did not mean to brush my finger against his nipple, but it would be a lie. I could claim that I did not enjoy the way his back suddenly straightened when I did, but that would be a worse lie still. It was enough, however, to shake my mind back into sanity. I could not  _do_ this. For the love of God, this was my very first patient. No matter how attractive he might be, I  _must_  think of him as a client, nothing more. "Are you a student at the University?"  
  
"I'm a student," he said. "But not from any university in London. I came down by train this afternoon."  
  
"Then what brings you to London?"  
  
"I came here to lose my virginity," he said, and even in the dim light I could catch a flash of teeth, the hint of a catlike grin. "I haven't any use for it, you see."  
  
My throat seemed to have sealed itself shut. "A noble goal, to be sure," I grated. I could not assume that he was saying what I wished. He  _might_  mean something other than 'If you would bugger me now, I would be very much obliged.' And then I saw his body shifting in the darkness. The words might possibly have been misinterpreted. The set of his shoulders, surrendering nothing and yet ceding everything, could not.  
  
His hand came to rest on my knee. "Would you happen to have any notions about just where it might be mislaid?"  
  
I glanced down at his hazy outline for a moment longer, my hand still against his skin. That he was attractive, of course, I had already noticed. But there was more to it than that. I  _liked_  the fellow. I liked his confident façade, and I liked even better the tiny hint of insecurity beneath it, the fact that he had dared to reach out and touch me coupled with the tentative way his hand rested on my knee. I liked that he hadn't lain down and died in the face of four assailants, and that he hadn't been too proud to accept help when it came along. I liked the way we had fought together, which had been surprisingly natural. And, I decided without truly deciding, I would like sodding him, too. I would like it very, very much. "It rather depends upon whom you want to mislay it?" I asked, a hint of teasing overemphasis in my voice, pressing my palm a bit more firmly against his chest.  
  
His voice was studiously casual. "Well, you are a medical man. You must have studied anatomy, yes?"  
  
I smiled around the syllable of a "Yes," already leaning forward. In the dim light there was a momentary confusion of noses, and then his lips were under mine. He did not know what he was doing--that was clear at once--but his instincts were good. His mouth was too open, at first, but when I ran his tongue along his lower lip he accommodated it gladly, his lips moving gently against the intruder. I was feeling far too little of him, my body informed me, and there was a very easy solution.   
  
I toppled him forward just as he grasped at me, and his wrist ended up pinned between our bodies as his back crackled into the hay. He made a little noise of pain, and I shifted my legs quickly, lifting my weight from him and freeing his hand. That my legs parted his more widely in the process was simply an added advantage. "I'm sorry," I murmured, moving my mouth away from his and applying it once, briefly, to his chin, by way of beginning a journey up his jaw. Though it was late in the evening, only the slightest hint of stubble adorned his skin, a pleasant contrast to the scratching of the moustache I had been cultivating for some months now, and which had begun to show definite signs of progress.  
  
"S'alright," he slurred. The hand that had been on my thigh did not move away, but instead slid upwards, his touch almost over-eager. He paused only a moment to knead my thigh with exceptionally strong and agile fingers before moving his hand still further north to grope at my erection through my trousers at the same moment that my mouth reached his ear. We both of us hissed at once, his fingers tightening in an involuntary but not remotely unpleasant fashion.  
  
"Slow down," I whispered into his ear, pleased by the fit of shivering it produced. "We've got all night. Unless you're in a hurry, that is." Among erotic activities, I have a particular fondness for sucking on earlobes. I permitted myself a moment's distraction, which my partner did not seem to begrudge. His "No" was more of a moan than a declaration. "That is...I've no reason to rush."  
  
I have had my share of lovers from all walks of society, but there was something particularly filthy about that cultured tone in such a context. "Then perhaps you might use your hands on my shirt-buttons, instead? You seem to have the advantage of me in nudity," I replied, running my fingers playfully along his ribs, and dragging one thumb down to dip into his navel.  
  
"If only in nudity," he answered gamely. My mouth moved around to nip at his collarbones, pulling the skin between my lips, and his hands left off groping me and lit on my collar. After he had shoved the jacket from my shoulders he untied my cravat with a slow sensuality that proved his potential as a lover, and, once it was un-knotted, he wrapped both ends around his hand and tugged upwards. It was not quite the smooth gesture it might have been, particularly given the insalubrious angle, but I took the hint, and let him pull my mouth back up to his. In this kiss he took the lead, his tongue breaching my lips quite efficiently, and I taught him something about how a pair of tongues may be used in concert, the flutterings and dartings and nibblings that form the repertoire of any true expert in the basial arts. His fingers, meanwhile, tangled into my hair with no prompting whatsoever, and in a way that made the entire experience that much sweeter. Clever, this so-called William. I was going to enjoy this.  
  
After a time, he recalled my instructions for his hands, and they moved regretfully from my hair. It surprised me to find that the art of undoing another man's buttons was not one in which he required practice--my shirt and waistcoat were opened with quite remarkable speed. I, meanwhile, brought my lips to the hollow of his throat, and spent a happy while tasting of his skin. It was a moment before I realized that his hands had slowed.  
  
"Shirt," he said, his voice rough, and then, "Off." I might have resented the curt nature of the command had it not been clear that the remark had been cursory of necessity, all other words being clearly beyond reach. Leaning back on my haunches, I did as he had bidden, slipping off my waistcoat and pulling my shirt swiftly over my head. I looked down at him once I had finished, contemplating my next move. Even in the dark his eyes glinted, with assessment and what I hoped was admiration. I had caught a brief glimpse of those eyes under the streetlights as we had fled. They were grey, a very unusual pure grey. On another man there would have been something dead, cold, even frightening in that absolute lack of color. But his eyes were so alert, so alive, that they could never merit that description. He lifted a hand to tousle the hair of my chest, and I let him hear my appreciation when those fine fingers grazed my nipple. What was good with fingers was better with mouths, however, and when I bent my head back over his chest, it was with that thought in mind.  
  
"Wait. Wait," he protested disjointedly, as my lips sucked at his pectoral. "What about our trousers?"   
  
I had rather intended to wait on that front--partly because hay, while more comfortable than floorboards, is a sharper medium than the uninitiated might suppose, but primarily to avoid pushing him too far too fast, given his lack of experience. As he had suggested it, however, I was hardly the man to stand in the way. That did not meant I couldn't tease him a bit.  
  
"Patience is a virtue," I mumbled, smiling into his breast, and then moved my mouth to nibble lightly at his nipple, wrapping my mouth around that warm little nub. He made a thoroughly satisfying noise which, though far from coherent, required no relation to the English language to clearly connotate 'more.' Naturally, I took this as my cue to pull away and sit back once more. "Fortunately, what we're engaged in is a vice." I moved my hands to my belt and gave him a cheeky little grin. "Race you," I announced, and proceeded to suit the action to the word.  
  
The dark patch of his hair cocked to the most peculiar angle, as though it had only just dawned on him that sex was not, in fact, a strictly serious pursuit--in short, that it might be  _fun_  as well as satisfying. And then he was hurrying to make up for my head start. He gave a sudden wry bark of laughter, and I found myself laughing too, and our fingers were flying on our buttons. He was ahead of me--he wore no belt, and his braces had been lost long since. When my trousers were halfway down my thighs, and his about his ankles, and it was clear that victory was destined to be his, I launched myself atop him once more, startling him into a momentary pause while I continued the process of wriggling myself free.   
  
"Cheat!" he gasped, still laughing as he realized my tactics.  
  
"You've neglected your boots," I pointed out, smirking at him.  
  
"No more than you," he answered, with grinning defiance.  
  
"Well, then. As we both seem to be facing the same fix," I darted down to kneel at his feet, taking care to drag my now-bare member against his as I moved to lend a double meaning to the words, "why don't we do the gentlemanly thing, and give aid to our fellow man?" His boots were tied in neat double-knots, sturdy and reliable but not difficult to untie. I caught his eye as best I could while I pulled each boot from his feet, and then peeled away his stockings and tugged his trousers from him. He was unbelievably pale, his skin glimmering even in that weak light, and quite startlingly attractive--lean, long-limbed, and graceful in repose, the smooth lines of his body broken, though certainly not unpleasantly, by the erection jutting up from amidst its shadowed patch of curls.  
  
"Extraordinary," he whispered.  
  
"What is?" I asked, tucking his stockings into a boot and setting those articles aside.  
  
"I would not have thought that the removal of boots, of all things..." he trailed off.  
  
"Ah," I smiled. "Possibly you might have had some suspicions about this, however..." I bent my body to kiss the smooth skin of his ankle, just below the  _malleolus_. I planted another kiss an inch above that bone, and another a measure higher on the inside of his calf.  
  
"Doctor," he said, far more calmly than I would have liked, "that is undoubtedly rather pleasant, but I suspect I should like it better were I not being so infernally poked."  
  
"Not yet, you aren't," I murmured mischievously. " _Oh_ , you mean the hay. Forgive me, my dear fellow." My tone was all honeyed wickedness. "Sit up for a moment, then." He did as I bid him, and I proceeded to spread our shirts and jackets over the hay, building as neat a nest as I was able. In a moment his hands came down to join mine, tucking sleeves into clever symmetrical patterns, making the thing suddenly much more sturdy than I should ever have managed.  
  
"And now," he said, with satisfied confidence, "I can take off your boots. Lie down."  
  
I obeyed with a smile at his enthusiasm. He knelt at my feet for a moment, naked in the darkness, and before I could blink his knees were on either side of my waist, and he was kissing me ravenously on the mouth.  
  
"I thought..." I mumbled, when I could get a word in edgewise, "...boots..."  
  
"Hang the boots," he declared, and kissed me again, those strong fingers grasping tight at my hair. He thrust his hips hard against mine, grinding our pricks together without the slightest hint of subtlety, and I heard myself growling, deep in my throat. I brought my hands up to his waist, which was narrow as a woman's, and dug my fingers against the protruding bones at his hip, holding him as still as I could. He responded by rocking himself back and forth, this less-dramatic motion nevertheless drawing groans from us both. His enthusiasm was satisfying, of course, but I still did not plan on rushing this. And then that determined young wanton moved his hands from my head to where my own rested on his hips, and slid my hands down to cup his arse.  
  
I had no intention of permitting the rascal to take control of this encounter. Two could play at  _that_  game. I broke away from his kiss and slid my body down a few feet before he had time to properly register what I was about. I waited just a moment, giving him time to realize my plans, and then wrapped my mouth entirely around him.  
  
It was a pretty little irony, I thought rather smugly, that, while I was the one with a cock in my mouth, it was him left gasping and choking.  
  
Subtleties would have been wasted, and so I did not bother with them. It was clear that, until I'd got him off, he'd not let me guide things where I would. I had no doubt that if I allowed him one release now he'd be hard again by the time I had him ready for my prick, and, as this  _was_  his first such encounter, it would be rather a kind touch, I thought, to bring him to his fall a second time. Besides, I  _enjoy_  the act of fellatio. I wanted to taste him, and I did not see any reason why I oughtn't to indulge.  
  
I did not expect the poor fellow to last long. In fact, his control was rather better than I had suspected. It may have been a full sixty seconds. He even managed a few scattered words during that time, the last of which, bless the man, was "Wait!" I responded by taking him as deeply into my mouth as I could manage and simultaneously reaching up a hand to give his stones a squeeze. He made a raw and entirely marvelous noise, and spent himself between my lips, as I sucked down every drop of his salty-bitter seed.  
  
I pulled away and sat up, my face coming level with his, and at such close range I could make out even in that light that his eyes were wide with shock and pleasure. I kissed him, pushing my tongue languorously into his mouth, encouraging him to taste himself on my lips. He responded sluggishly, and suddenly all his weight was leaning against me, as though the full force of his climax had only just broken on him. I caught him by the arms and lowered the both of us gently onto our little nest in the straw, he on his left side, I on my right.  
  
"I," he began, his voice shaky, "that is, I...I cannot begin to...I do not know how to..."  
  
I kissed him again, and he melted gladly into the embrace. "Will you trust me just a little, now?" I asked gently. He tensed with suspicion, but I spoke unhurriedly and calmly. "I would like very much to bugger you, if you find the prospect agreeable. That was what you meant, wasn't it, when you said you'd come to lose your virginity?" I trailed a hand gently down his chest, around to his hip, back, lightly, over the curve of one his buttocks, then down to his thigh, where I rested it.  
  
"It must have been," he said, a bit dazedly still. I wasn't sure whether I should expect questions, or requests, or alternate proposals, but what he finally said was, "Shouldn't you ought to take your boots off first?"   
  
I could not begin to help myself. I laughed whole-heartedly.  
  
"Certainly," I said, as soon as I could manage it, for he looked just a bit wounded by my mirth. "Would you care to see to it, or shall I?"  
  
He assented eagerly, slithering down my body to attack my laces. "I still don't understand why it felt so good when you took off mine."  
  
'Why' is not a question I am accustomed to ask in the context of the sensual. Having ascertained through experience a few basic rules that have generally served me well--the edges of the body are the most sensitive parts; communication is crucial to the enjoyment of both parties; there is scarcely a corner of the person from which  _some_  erotic pleasure cannot be derived; a hint of pain is not a deterrent to pleasure, and may in fact increase it; the aural sense is nearly as important to sex as the tactile--I had never stopped to question the causes of those truths. "Well...it isn't precisely easy to explain," I admitted. "There isn't much that can't be sensual, so long as it's something out of the common." I glanced down at his dim form, bent over my feet. "I don't suppose you'd think of your back, for example, as an area abounding in lascivious possibilities? But that'd be before you've felt a mouth on your shoulder blades." He had an unfairly beautiful back. I only brought up the subject for an excuse to explore it, I freely admit.   
  
Something about him when he stammered was ridiculously charming. "And feet are more sensitive than backs," he managed, by way of finding something worth saying. He wiped the smile from my face when he ran his fingers down my newly-bared instep.   
  
I'd have given a minor fortune to feel his mouth follow the path that his fingers had just traced, but that isn't the sort of thing one asks of a stranger on his first outing into the world of the sensual. I contented myself with a wriggle of pleasure, but it was the thought of that regal young fellow licking my feet that prompted me to point out, "And there's something deliciously perverse about feet in particular. To do with power, of course." Lord, but that was a pervasive image. Still, I have never been the sort of man to dwell on what I cannot have, particularly when there were so many other delightful possibilities available to me just then. I intended to taste Mr. William Scott's spine, and I  _would_.   
  
"Though I wouldn't count backs out just yet, where sensitivity is concerned," I continued, in a would-be casual tone, sitting up so that I could reach him where he crouched. "Not until...well..." I touched my index and middle fingers to his neck, just below his hairline, and dragged them downward with the lightest touch I could possibly manage. I stopped only once I had reached the small of his back, where I pressed my whole hand for a fleeting instant before lying back on our bed of discarded garments. "Do you see what I mean?" I asked, in a rather self-satisfied tone.  
  
At some time in the process he had managed to yank my other bootlace into a still worse state, and his voice was hoarse indeed as he asked, "Perhaps if you would be willing to demonstrate further?"  
  
I had him, I thought, positively smug. My neglected prick twitched eagerly at the thought of the perfect white skin between his shoulders, just visible where he knelt at my feet, and how it would taste and feel under my tongue. I reached a hand down to give a few lazy, sensual strokes to my own member, and I spoke with the same slow seduction in my tone. "One thing at a time, William." Those l's were made to be savored, and I believe I did them justice. "Boots first. Then I'd be more than happy to..." I gripped myself a touch more firmly, imagining, "...demonstrate further."  
  
The avidity with which he applied himself to my laces thereafter would have been ridiculous if it were not so very flattering. "There!" he cried, exuberant in his triumph, as though he were a magician who had just plucked a rabbit from his hat. My boots and trousers vanished into the darkness.  
  
"Amazing what a little incentive can do," I pronounced, and, leaning down to pull his mouth up where I could get at it, found that he had had the same idea. Our foreheads collided, and then we were both laughing. I could not help but kiss the spot where my head had struck, and he laughed all the harder for that. Once he was lying beside me I kissed him again, properly, on his grinning mouth, and his bare leg crept over mine, tugging us together. Marvelous as it felt, I refused to be deterred. "Now. The subject was backs, I believe," I said with a smile, and, taking him by the shoulders, rolled him onto his other side. His nape was beneath my nose, and I breathed him in, pleased by the goose-pimples that sprung up on his arms.  
  
I pressed my whole body up against him for a moment, and his breath hissed as my erection ground into the curve of his arse. "Am I meant to be doing anything?" he asked, his nervousness well-masked, but just detectable.  
  
I nuzzled myself against the crook of his neck, the gesture as much possessive as affectionate. "Only just to relax," I replied, kissing him just at the juncture of shoulder and neck. I recalled that I had promised an exploration of his  _scapulae_ , and I had no reason whatever to jilt him on that front. I dipped my head down some six inches, and scraped my teeth along the long diagonal edge of his left shoulder-blade, nearly as far as his neck. I could gladly have spent hours engaged in no other occupation than worshiping his skin, but it occurred to me that, no matter how pleasant the sensations I was evoking might be, he would inevitably grow distracted if I did not give him something to do. "Tell me what you've thought of, when you've imagined this," I suggested, and then wrapped my mouth around that protruding vertebra that marks the borderland between the neck proper and the rest of the spine. He made a noise deep in his throat, but otherwise did not speak, and so, after only a few more moments savoring that pleasurable occupation, I pulled my lips away to prompt, "Tell me what's in your mind when you take yourself in hand."  
  
He hesitated for a long while as I devoted myself to his neck, and when finally he spoke, it was only a quavering, "I'm not sure." Though I'd known plenty of men and women in the past who found speaking of sexual matters to be a difficult prospect, he'd been so frank earlier that I was surprised to hear him fumble so. "Most of the books have girls in them, and you're definitely not a girl. I expect I've been wondering if it felt different to have someone else take me in hand."  
  
"No," I replied, unable to hold back a smile, "I am not a girl." I had begun kissing my way down his spine, very slowly indeed, taking the time to properly enjoy each and every inch. Now I slipped my arm under his and slid a hand from his sternum downwards. I paused to press my hand against his stomach, enjoying the tautness of his muscles, and then trailed my fingers lightly along his prick, which had begun to show signs of renewed interest. My hand finally came to rest on the outer edge of his thigh, stroking up and down along his glass-smooth skin as my lips moved ever lower on his back. "And when did you come to understand that feminine charms were not what you preferred?" The curve of his spine was gloriously defined, an exquisite bit of scrollwork, and I kissed my way into the depression at its base with no small degree of appreciation for the artistry beneath my lips. "Or is it merely coincidence that  _I_ ," I moved my hand from his thigh to grasp one of his, and pulled those slim fingers back to stroke along the length of my erection, "happened to be the most promising prospect in your programme of debauchery?"  
  
"I like coincidences." His breathing was decidedly ragged now. "They tell you all sorts of things."  
  
That was not precisely the conversation I had expected to be having. Rather an odd fellow, this one, but odd and interesting holds far more appeal to me than typical and dull. "And what does this coincidence tell you about me?" I slid down a bit further to kiss him on either hip, sucking the skin into my mouth hard enough to leave marks. It was a thoroughly enjoyable occupation, though the move brought my prick out of reach of his fingers, a circumstance I deeply regretted.   
  
"That you've done this before. Which is good, because I don't think it's the sort of thing you can learn from books." My young scholar's voice had raised at least half an octave, and the words tumbled pell-mell from his lips. I truly did not mean to spend so much of my time laughing at him, but I really could not help myself. I tried, at least, to make certain that my tone was kindly.  
  
"That's true. It isn't the sort of thing you can learn from books." I kissed him one last time on the curve of his hip, and then rolled away from him, seeking out my kit.  
  
"What are you doing?"   
  
"Trying to find something suitable...yes, I think this will do." One of the many advantages of the medical profession, I thought, was constant proximity to a tin of petroleum jelly. Returning to his side, I rolled him back away from me. Possibly I ought to have kissed him first, but I admit that I was beginning to grow somewhat impatient. He had already reached his climax once, after all. I had not. And having just spent so much time pressed up against his backside, I had not for a moment been permitted to forget the pleasure I had not yet tasted. As I unscrewed the lid of the tin I had gone to retrieve, however, I sought to redeem the lapse, and prevent him feeling any nervousness, by continuing the conversation. "There are certain advantages to books, of course. They can give one the most marvelous ideas." I slicked my own prick first. I knew from experience that once I had felt the tight heat of him around my fingers, I would find it far more difficult to think clearly. "Have you ever read Catullus?"  
  
"Poetry isn't really my field of study," he answered, in an offhand manner. I admit, my regard for him dipped by a fraction.  _Everyone_  ought to have read Catullus--even ladies, in my opinion, no matter how improper he may be. He redeemed himself somewhat by continuing after a moment with, "Is that the only book I should read?" Curiosity is, after all, the very root of intelligence. It struck me that I was letting my mind wander, however, and I returned to the subject at hand.  
  
"Well, the classical world is full of...interesting partnerships between men," I replied, the slick fingers of my right hand still wrapped around my prick. "Not only Catullus, who greeted his returning friend with _applicansque collum ucundum os oculosque suaviabor_ ," I lifted my free hand to tilt his face, so I could kiss him on the lips and eyes, as the verse suggested, "and Caesar, of course," running my hand speculatively along his taut backside, "who was every wife's husband and every husband's wife." I kissed his ear then, teasingly. "But there was also Alcibiades, who threw himself quite shamelessly at Socrates," I had re-coated my right hand in the meanwhile, and ran my index finger between his nates, testing his willingness, "and Alexander, who died of grief for his Hephaestion." My balm-covered finger brushed once, twice, and again against his sphincter--not yet seeking ingress, only attempting to prove to him that there was pleasure to be had for him even at this stage of the proceedings. "And Achilles and Patroclus, of course, who were  _clearly_  more than just cousins..." I had run out of examples, and of patience. I wanted him. God, but I wanted him.   
  
There was a pause before he answered, as though he had only just realized that I had ceased to speak. "I shall have to pay more attention to the classics in future."  
  
I could hardly blame him for his distraction. "Mmmm," was as much as I could manage myself. I had had more than enough of teasing. The tip of my middle finger was so well slicked that it breached him easily, but I slid into him no further than my first knuckle, letting him adjust to the idea as much as the sensation. He did not immediately tighten around me, which I took as a positive sign. "I need for you to push yourself back against my finger as I press inside you," I said, kissing him gently on the neck. "It will be easier if you exhale as I do. Do you understand?"  
  
"Exhale," he repeated, with all the intensity of a sinner reciting a prayer. "Yes. Yes, I understand."  
  
"That's good." I was trying desperately not to condescend to him--he was not a child, for all his inexperience--but I attempted to keep my tone reassuring all the same. It was much like being a doctor, I realized. Though I didn't suppose my professors at university would approve of this form of practice in developing a soothing tone. "It may be a bit uncomfortable, but it oughtn't to hurt. Just try to relax..."  
  
I pushed my finger inside him as smoothly and as gently as I could--too slowly would have been worse, I knew. I was just as delicate as I could be, I'm willing to swear it. But within half-a-second of my finger stilling within him, he clamped shut tight around me, his shoulders practically colliding with his ears as his whole body reacted.  _Damn_.  
  
Moving the finger I had inside him, even to withdraw it, would invariably make things far worse than they already were. The only thing for it was to stay still until his internal muscles could be persuaded to relax. And there was nothing I could do to force that.  
  
Lifting my free hand, I eased his shoulder downwards, attempting to convince both his mind and his body that I was no kind of threat. "Come here," I said softly, tilting his face towards mine and kissing his lips. On second thought, there was no sense in skimping. I kissed him again. The pressure around my finger did not lighten, and I could not read from his lips whether or not he was afraid, or, worse, in pain. "How does it feel?"  
  
For a moment, he did not reply. "Not bad," he said finally. "Strange though. I...can't think of anything to compare it to." He hesitated again. "Am I doing it right?"  
  
_No, but that's to be expected, your first time._  "I misphrased the question. What I meant was, how do  _you_ feel? I won't move until you're ready, I swear it, but it'll be a fight against your own instincts to begin with. A fight you cannot win if you panic."  
  
"I never panic," he replied, his tone so entirely confident as to be almost scornful. It was clear, however, that that derision was directed primarily at himself, not at me, an assessment strengthened when he continued, far less certainly, with, "What...what precisely..."  
  
I moved my mouth directly over his ear, hoping the sensation would prove a distraction from the uncomfortable foreignness of my finger still within him. "All you've really to do is remember that your interior muscles are just as much at your mind's control as any others in your body. We're so used to let them work on instinct that it's not easy to teach them to obey, at first . But I promise you, the exercise will be very, very well worth it. You  _will_  enjoy this, if you can only convince your body that I'm not going to hurt you." I pressed my free hand to his stomach, stroking his skin, gentle but sensual as well. "And keep breathing. It will be much easier if you keep breathing."  
  
His breathing deepened immediately and profoundly, and a bit of the tension in him faded. "If I thought you were going to hurt me, I'd've run for it," he pointed out.   
  
I grinned against his ear, tickling him quite intentionally with my moustache. He had a sense of humor, this one, and I was glad to see he'd kept it. "Good," I replied, and felt him relax a little further. I'd made the whole thing too cerebral, I realized--he seemed to do best when his attention was focused elsewhere, away from my invasion of his body. If I gave him some other task to attend to... "In the meanwhile, would you mind very much doing a little something for me?" I asked, moving my free hand away from his stomach, up to run a pair of fingers along his lower lip.  
  
He kissed my fingers, briefly but with evident enjoyment. "Why?"  
  
I assumed the most sensual tone I could summon--not a difficult feat, with one finger still wrapped tight in that heat that I ached to possess, and another growing wet under the soft ministrations of his tongue. "Because while I'm buggering you, William--and I assure you, that will be enjoyable enough all on its own--the thought had occurred to me that it might be still more pleasant for you if I were to stroke your cock in the meanwhile." He was shuddering now, pressed back against me, lost in those filthy syllables, and all at once the tightness around my finger lessened, his muscles  _finally_  surrendering to my touch. I could have laughed with triumph. "And that will feel even better if your tongue has crossed my palm once or twice beforehand," I continued, wary of startling him back into tension, and enjoying the eager way he hurried to lap at my palm. "Now, just remember how that feels," I said, still hesitant to move suddenly, "Just like that."  
  
It took him a moment to understand what I meant. I could almost hear his face brighten when it occurred to him. "Aha! Now I see it. Or feel it, rather."  
  
I could not rush. I  _would_  not rush. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to wait. "May I move a bit now?"  
  
He clenched around me again. I nearly groaned with dismay, but before the sound had passed my lips he was open once more, proving to himself and to me that he had learned his lesson well. "Certainly," he said proudly. His hand wrapped around my wrist, the one still hovering near his mouth. "But only if you were serious about your hand."  
  
"Quite serious!" I laughed, and got down to the business of preparing him properly. I took care not to move too quickly, but thrust my finger in and out of him at reasonably steady pace all the same. Not for a moment did his former tension return, and after a short while it was his turn to surprise me. I found him matching my tempo, using the hand on my left wrist to push a pair of my fingers into his mouth in time with the movement of my right hand inside him. I would have admired his cleverness, if my brain had managed to be the first organ to respond. It was not. As it was, I had no time for admiration; I was far too busy stopping my hips thrusting against his thighs, in an attempt to relieve the arousal that was growing near-intolerable. And then he did something far cleverer, and even more difficult to appreciate from a standpoint of detached intellect.  
  
"Perhaps you might..." He reached one of his hands behind him, and wrapped those fine strong fingers around my prick. " _This_  is a good deal larger than one finger. Will it fit? Or should you add another finger now?"  
  
I was positively gritting my teeth by then. I could not take him yet, not  _quite_  yet, not without doing him harm; the best pleasure I could afford myself at the present was that of giving pleasure to him.  
  
"Very soon," I replied, unsteady with the feeling of those blessed  _fingers_  on me--and dear God, now he was  _moving_  them, I was at some risk of coming undone before my time, "but not before I've done this..." I had deliberately avoided his prostate before, and now dragged my finger firmly across it as my hand slid away from his body.  
  
The results were perfectly marvelous. He made a noise that sounded as though he were attempting to swallow his tongue, and bowed that delectable spine into an incredibly graceful arc.  
  
"What was that?" I asked him wickedly. If I was still suffering dreadfully from being anywhere other than inside him, at least I could see for myself that he was suffering for it, too.  
  
"Do that again!" he gasped, any veneer of urbanity which he might have attempted to preserve completely abandoned.  
  
I smirked, and wriggled my hips slightly by way of nudging the hand that had gone still around my prick, encouraging him to keep moving. "One request at a time, my dear boy," I murmured silkily. "You asked me for this first, I think." I added a second finger to the first inside his body, and was pleased to feel that he accommodated it easily. "Now, remind me what else it is you wanted?"  
  
Eloquence was clearly still beyond him. "Again.  _Please_ , again."  
  
_Christ_. Knowing that I had inspired that frantic tone of voice... _Five minutes_ , I reminded myself.  _Not even that, and you'll be driving into that sweet, tight heat._  It seemed far, far too long to wait. That voice, however, I could hear again  _now_. "What, this?" I asked him, parting my fingers, scissoring them around his prostate as my fingers continued to thrust.  
  
"Yes!" Just as wild, just as unrestrained, and then..."What  _is_  that?"  
  
I nearly groaned. Was there no way of turning off that scholarly instinct? "The single most perfect spot in the entire male anatomy," I said, my mouth beside his ear. "The reason why I can safely promise that my cock in your arse is going to be just as marvelous a sensation for you as it is for me." If I had to wait much longer for that sensation, particularly with his fingers languidly straying over my over-sensitized prick, my heart might actually stop. How near was he to ready? He had been so overwhelmingly tight at first, but he seemed to be adjusting to my fingers quite well. Surely he must be  _nearly_  ready for me to...  
  
"How am I going to look it up if I don't know its  _name_?" he insisted. How the hell could he  _possibly_  care about terminology at such a moment as this?  
  
"Prostate, is the word you want," I said roughly, dragging my two fingers harshly against it as I pulled them fully from his body. He groaned and pushed his hips backwards, seeking the intrusion of which he was suddenly bereft, and I plunged my two fingers swiftly back into him. He gave a little cry, but it was of pleasure and surprise rather than pain; he did not tense. That was as much proof as I required. I pulled my fingers out of him again. "On your hands and knees," I ordered him in that same hoarse tone, lifting myself from the floorboards and sitting back on my heels.  
  
He lay dazed for a moment, then sat up and looked at me. His expression, so far as I could make out, was not fear, only a hint of bemusement. I pulled him upright by the arm, and then put my hands to either side of his face, the balm-slick fingers of my right hand slipping on his high cheekbones, tugging him into a kiss. It was ungentle and anything but neat, and I take responsibility for both of those faults. I nipped at his lower lip, again and again, devouring his mouth. "William," I spoke the words into his mouth, in a voice that was as calm as I could make it but still nearer a growl than not, "I cannot wait any longer. If you do not get on your hands and knees very, very shortly, I will find myself in no state to be buggering anyone. Unless you have some reason to dislike that choice of position? I will not say that I invite suggestions, but if you have a strong aversion to that particular methodology I will of course choose something else."  
  
He hesitated for a long moment, then licked his lips. He leaned forward suddenly and kissed me once more, fiercely, his hands on my thighs. Then he turned away from me. His hands fisted in the straw with a crackle that seemed tremendously loud as he went down on all fours.   
  
His hair was dark and shining in the moonlight at the far end of that long white expanse of his back, and, just before me, his arse angled upwards in invitation. It occurred to me to wonder whether the mannerism were unconscious or nothing of the sort. I do not recall thinking about very much of anything after that.  
  
"Like this?" he asked me, his voice raw with anticipation and arousal.  
  
"Yes." One of my hands moved to his hip, steadying and gentling and holding him still. And the other wrapped around my prick, bringing it in line with his opening.   
  
"You are ready?" I had just presence of mind left to ask.  
  
He nodded. I could not wait for anything more. I slid into him, only by an inch, and set my jaw, my fingers digging against his hips. In a week he would have purple-green bruises, marring and adorning that pale skin. "Am I hurting you?" I ground out. I did not think so, but the adjustment would not be an entirely easy one, surely.  
  
"How," he asked, as though struggling to remember that there were such things as words, "can you _possibly_  have stopped?"  
  
"Thank God," I murmured fervently, and thrust myself fully home within him.  
  
There followed a long moment when neither of us could breathe in anything like a normal pattern. I will admit, the fact that I remained still was not  _entirely_  in deference to his inexperience. If I had begun to move any sooner, I'd have come off before the end of the next stroke. He was not the first virgin I'd sodded, but none had done better justice to common wisdom concerning the tightness of that breed of individual. He felt like heaven in earthly guise. I am well aware that there are very few people in this nation who would not consider what we were doing a sin, but if hellfire is the price of feeling like  _that_ , so be it.  
  
I seemed to have robbed him of speech entirely, but after what he clearly deemed too long a spell, he pushed his hips back against me (as far as he could, which, given how near we were already, was not much) with a noise that was saved from the title of 'whine' only by its depth. Very well--if that was what he wanted. I pulled back slowly, deliberately, until only the very head of my cock remained inside him, and then slammed my hips back forcefully against his, burying myself entirely within him again with a force that shook his entire body. He cried out and threw back his head, and it needed no arrogance on my part to be certain that the gesture was not one of pain.  
  
"Again!" I cannot describe his voice, even now. It was pure sex, and drew an answering growl from my throat. I complied, even harder this time, and I swear that he whimpered.  
  
"Again. More. Please, more." I do not know why that whisper should have been what broke my control, but it did. He was such a pretty, wild, wanton thing, and I could not keep myself from it any longer. I reached one hand up to his shoulder, the other still braced on his hip, and I rode him, hard and fast and deep, a pounding rhythm, memorizing every gasp and groan and cry of bliss to provide for me in lonelier nights than this one.  
  
"Please," I heard him say some time later, somewhere through the haze, "would it...ruin...things...if I were to...touch...myself?"  
  
I wanted to tell him that he would be needing his hands to keep himself upright, or to whisper that it would please me to be the one to pleasure him. I didn't have words enough. Fortunately, I did not need them. I simply slid the hand from his hip downwards and wrapped it around his member, frigging him soundly as my cock maintained its merciless pace. I could just see his head drop, and realized that he was trying, as best he could with such little light, to watch as I pulled at his prick.  
  
I wanted to bring him off before I came myself--not from any consideration of romanticism, I admit, but for the simple reason that I intended to come far too hard to permit myself sufficient power of limb or mind for finishing him off afterwards. I slowed my hips very slightly-- _just_  enough to keep myself from ending, clinging raggedly to the edge. I could not hold on for very long. But from the tremors that now had a constant hold on his entire form, I knew that I would not have to. I bent over him, bringing my mouth as near to his ear as the angle of our bodies would allow, summoning control enough for just a few words.  
  
"When you come off," I panted against his neck, "I want you to scream for me."  
  
It took him several tries at answering, which produced only inarticulate sounds of pure pleasure, before he managed, "Someone will..."  
  
"No-one will hear." I did not have another full sentence in me. Two syllables was my limit. "For me."  
  
He could not stop shaking. How I knew that he was trying I am not aware, but I am sure that he was. His limbs wavered uncontrollably, until he lost control of his arms entirely and they collapsed beneath him. The hand on his shoulder was jostled off, and I moved it back, a matched pair with the other on his two hips, holding him still--trying to prevent any attempts on his part to hinder my rhythm by thrusting himself backwards, and also to stop him slipping forward unintentionally on the hay.   
  
The downward movement of his torso had forced his hips upward slightly, deepening the angle of penetration, and, from the sounds of his breathing, also increasing the frequency with which my cock hit his prostate. I was already so near to losing myself completely, and the change of angle did me no favors. I needed him to finish, I needed him to finish  _right then_  or I...  
  
The cry that passed his lips was entirely unrestrained, more-than-earthly and yet completely natural. It eclipsed the pounding of the blood in my ears, and then became a part of it. I held myself back as he spilled himself, continued to ride him through his climax, and then finally,  _finally_ , allowed myself to finish too, a strangled shout pushing past my lips as I wavered in the blackness of orgasm, neither able nor willing to fight against the sensation that threatened to overwhelm me.  
  
All the strength went out of me, and I collapsed onto his back. Within a few moments I regained sufficient presence of mind to roll to one side, to spare him most of my weight, my softening prick sliding out of him as I did. We were still pleasantly entwined, however, my arm and leg across him, nested in a tangle of garments and straw, trying to remember to breathe. I was absolutely and utterly exhausted. And very, very comfortable. And he smelled wonderful, sweat and vanilla and something faintly chemical...  
  
"I need to go catch my train," he said suddenly, startling me out of my doze.  
  
"Hmm?" His words finally registered, and I sat up far quicker than I ought to have, blood flooding my senses with a rush of colors. "Blast. Me too. They're expecting me at Netley.  
  
"Netley?"  
  
"Down by Portsmouth." I was not particularly looking forward to the transition, truth be told. It would force me to recall the fact, one which I had shoved to the back of my mind all through medical school, that I could not afford to purchase a practice, like some of my luckier fellows. "Training school for Army surgeons."  
  
"You're going into the Army? You won't be in London?" he asked. That brought a smile to my face, in spite of the unpleasant truth of it. I'd have liked to have seen him again, too, I realized.  
  
"Afraid not," I said, letting him hear my genuine regret, and spared a moment in the process of seeking out my clothes to run my fingers over his cheek. Something in the way he pressed back against the caress reminded me that he was young yet, much younger than his polished tone suggested, and that it was only the merest luck that had prevented him falling into the hands of a group of roughs who'd have used him far worse than I did. There wasn't much I could do to stop him being dealt with less kindly in future, but what I could do, I owed him. "Not that you'll have any trouble finding other partners. Just go to the Three Bells on Starcross Street, or the Cock in the Cauldron on Duke's Road."  
  
"Here, I think this one's yours," he said, handing me my shirt, and repeating the names of the taverns I'd just given him. I'd already found my boots by then, but could do little about it until I recovered my trousers. He passed those over as well a moment later. "Yes. The students with inclinations our way tend to visit those two pubs rather than the others." What else did he need to know? "It's best to steer clear of the rent boys in the East End. They're a poxy lot." I'd done what I could for enough of the poor noseless wretches these past few years, but all I could do wasn't much, God knew. "Not that the fine gentlemen from the West End are much better. At least you're safe from anyone damnfool enough to think fucking a virgin will cure syphilis," I said, half to myself, and then realized that he'd frozen beside me.   
  
"No, I haven't got it," I hastened to reassure him. "Or anything else you have to worry about.  _Primum non nocere_ , remember?" He resumed his rustling of clothing with a tiny sigh of relief, his fingers moving in a way that seemed to indicate the buttoning of a waistcoat, though it was far too dark to be certain. "If you're sore in the morning--and you will be!--it's just because you've been using muscles in new ways. A hot bath should ease you." That was as much advice as I could think to give him. I pulled on my jacket, and checked for the watch in my waistcoat pocket just to be certain. It was a cheap, flimsy thing, nothing like the fine machine my brother had inherited from our father last year, I thought with regret. And lord only knew how long it'd be before that disappeared for drinking money. If I had been the elder son, I might have stayed in London, and been a respected specialist, and seen rich patients, and spent my nights with this handsome young man, or another like him. And instead...  
  
"I can see that my education in this area has only just begun," he said, interrupting my self-pity. I was glad of the distraction, for what good are 'if-only's to anyone?  
  
"There  _are_  books," I said, willing myself to sound lighthearted. "Medical titles, for the most part. And Catullus," I reminded him with a smile. "But practical studies are more fun. Just remember not to get caught."  
  
He gave an undignified snort as I pulled on my stockings. "And yet, if I were to go out and impregnate half-a-dozen young females, no one would do more than say 'tut tut.'"  
  
He was still making me laugh, this one. I was beginning to wish very badly that I might someday see him again. "They'd do more than that," I pointed out. "Just be discreet, whoever you choose, and you'll be all right." Or I did sincerely hope so.  
  
"I'll manage," he said, tremendously self-confident.  
  
"Good lad," I smiled, doing up my bootlaces.  
  
"Will you be at Netley long?" He was a good bit behind me when it came to attire, I realized. Trying to make the moment last, no doubt. It was his privilege; every man should be allowed to savor his first night of sensual pleasure.  
  
"A few months. Then on to India."  _Don't think of it_ , I urged myself.  _Think of anything but that_. "And you'll be back at school. How long before you take your degree?"  
  
"Longer than I like."  
  
I chuckled over that remark, too. "London's not the only place in the world where a man can get buggered, you know. There's bound to be a few odd sods wandering about your school." It was a fact that he seemed not yet to have realized, and I, for one, was grateful. Fighting and fucking were a much better way of spending my last night in London than drinking myself silly in some greasy pub.  
  
"Very odd, no doubt." And then again, perhaps they weren't, I thought, with unaccustomed melancholy. If he made me laugh once more, I would someday find myself missing the fellow, and that would be positively absurd. I stood and retrieved my medical bag, carrying it over to stow it away in my suitcase. "I have to go." He followed me, noiseless in his stocking feet, and looking up in the slightly brighter light near the door I caught an indistinct glimpse of face. "Are you even going to be able to see out of that eye come morning?" I supposed it was rather a foolish question for me to ask him, doctor that I now was, but then again, he knew his own body better than I could.  
  
He lifted a hand to poke at his swollen flesh. "Possibly not."  
  
"Steak. A raw one. Although a cold compress would be just as effective." I stood and tilted his chin, giving me a better look. "If your cheekbone were broken we'd know it by now." And a very good thing, too. It would be desecration of a great work of art, to ruin such cheekbones as  _those_.  
  
"I've had worse in a boxing match. I'm all right." Ah, a boxer. That would explain how he lasted long enough against those thugs for me to appear. One of his hands had come to rest over my heart, and the other tugged at my lapel.  
  
"Thank you," he said softly, with deeply affecting sincerity, and kissed me.  
  
Damn the fellow. I didn't want to think about losing what had never been properly mine, and here he was... I couldn't help but surrender to those lips in the end. When I felt that another moment would have seen me saying to hell with my train, however, and pulling him back to our hay-bale, I grasped him by the shoulders, and gently pushed him away. "You're welcome." I cleared my throat. "But I can't be late. Goodbye, William. The cabstand is to the right, and up at the top of the street when you're ready."  
  
I picked up my suitcase, and stood still for a moment. If I had turned once I opened the door, I might have had one clear look at him. But I did not want that--I did, and yet I did not. It would be pleasing enough, to have that one mental souvenir. But only in the same sense that picking a scab, in the moment of the action, is pleasing. One instant of satisfaction, and many long months bearing the scar.  
  
I opened the door, my face turned resolutely forward, and was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Return to Chapter Two, if you wish to read Holmes's version of events, or go on to Chapter Four for the Epilogue.


	4. Epilogue: Baker Street, 1883

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the memories are discussed at a much later date.

It was another morning at Baker Street--the usual thing. Holmes and I at the breakfast table. He lecturing on philosophy, criminology, and the idiocy of Scotland Yard over rashers and toast. I cataloguing his every look and word and movement, as though perhaps, if I held on tight to everything of himself that he gave me, he might recognize my faithful stewardship, and name me guardian of the rest of him as well. It was a foolish hope, but I needed  _some_  hope, foolish or no. I felt at that era of my life that if I did not possess absolutely everything that Sherlock Holmes was, and  _soon_ , I might physically disintegrate with longing. Unfortunately, the state of being about to physically disintegrate with longing does tend to show on a man's face, particularly when that man is as ingenuous as myself, and when his observer is Sherlock Holmes.   
  
"Watson?" he asked me, wearing a curious expression. He had blacked his eye in the boxing ring the night before. It did not make him any less attractive. On the contrary. "What is it, my dear fellow?"  
  
I was spared answering that question--and thank God for it--by a knock on the sitting room door. Holmes sprang from his chair and darted to the door.  
  
"William Sherlock Scott Holmes?" asked the messenger politely.  
  
_William_... _William Scott_...I looked up at my fellow-lodger, my companion, my dearest friend. I felt, almost physically, the effect of that name settling into my brain. And suddenly the memory of a former life was sitting there in Baker Street, rushing through my veins with all the force of a river in flood. Suddenly, I was twenty-four years old, hale and healthy, and he an overeager twenty-two, and our tongues were in each other's mouths, surrounded by the scent of hay and foggy London spring...  
  
I must have gasped. It takes a great deal to cause that reaction from me, but learning that I had once sodded the man who now haunted my every fantasy was a more than sufficient impetus. Holmes glanced towards me, and in one flicker of his eyelids I was sure that he had read my thoughts. The full implications dawned on me then. He had known all this time! He  _must_  have known. Even if I had not given him my real name on that faraway night, it had been a far more important encounter for him than for me, and even if it had not been, he was  _Sherlock Holmes_. He knew everything. My memory might have been deceived for years by low lights and the tremendous significance of intervening events, but his could not have been. I realized, as I heard him courteously accept the summons to court, tip the messenger, and send the young fellow on his way, that Holmes must have known precisely who I was from the very moment of our meeting at St. Bart's. Which meant...which meant...  
  
"Well, Watson," he said softly, fixing me with his keenest look, once he had recrossed the room and we were alone once more. "You have got something to tell me, I think."  
  
It was so  _like_  him. I choked off a half-hysterical laugh. I could almost have killed him in that moment. It was one of two things I could have done, and I chose the other. I stood, and walked swiftly to where he stood by the window. I pulled the shade closed. And then I pressed five of my fingers against his neck, and the other five into his hip, and I kissed his waiting mouth, kissed him with as much of my soul as my two lips could possibly contain.  
  
His fingers fisted in the fabric of my jacket, but that was as much as he moved. Apart from that, he simply stood and let me kiss him, parting his lips beneath my onslaught. I knew what he was doing. He was my Holmes, and so I knew. He was soaking in the sensation, storing it, saving it. I appreciated the instinct, but that was not what I wanted from him just then. I wanted him  _there_ , fully and entirely. I broke the kiss, and stepped back a pace.  
  
"Sherlock Holmes," I said wryly, "I would have expected you, of all men, to have learned something in the course of half-a-decade."  
  
He raised one of those perfect ebony eyebrows. "Was that merely an examination, then? It is, no doubt, the privilege of the teacher, to maintain an interest in his pupil's progress. If I had known that to be your attitude, I daresay I should have made a better show of it. As it happens, I  _have_  come on a bit in the amorous arts these past few years. And if you will come with me now," he stretched out a hand, "I shall endeavour to prove that your efforts as an instructor were by no means wasted."  
  
I shook my head slowly, and a shadow flickered momentarily over his features. "That's just it," I said, striding back into his reach. "I do not want a man who kisses me as though it were some sort of test." I threaded my fingers into his hair, and angled his face towards mine. "For once in your life, Holmes, if only for a few seconds," I admonished with a smile, " _stop thinking_."  
  
For a moment, he looked at me as though I had asked him to spend the next week standing on his head. His eyes darkened, pupils fluctuating with intense concentration--proof that, far from heeding me, he was doing precisely the opposite. I brushed my nose against his, and looked back at him. And then it came together in his mind, and he understood.  
  
His whole posture changed. There was tension in his every sinew, and yet in some sense he was more natural than I had ever seen him before. His eyelids drifted half-closed, at once langourous and piercing. I was completely ensnared. I  _wanted_  to be completely ensnared. His hands were drifting dreamily over my back, seemingly without direction until one came to rest on the back of my head. His eyes closed. My eyes closed. And then his lips touched mine, so delicately that it was hardly a kiss at all, and we both grew instantly and absolutely still.  
  
There wasn't anything. There wasn't anything in the universe but him. Possibly there was not even the rest of him--only his lips, and his absence of breath. I have no idea how long we remained that way. I only know that the next thing that happened was his hand suddenly pulling me forwards, crushing our mouths together, driving the air from my lungs, bruising my lips against my teeth, annihilating any sense of a difference between his flesh and mine, and at the same time making me acutely aware of every inch of his body, and every inch of my own.  
  
"Yes," I said, when lack of oxygen had finally parted our lips. "That was what I was trying to say."  
  
"I thought so." He smiled, one of the few full and unabashed smiles I have ever seen on his face, and pulled me away to his bed.  
  
*  
  
"By the by, doctor," it must have been several days later, though I scarcely remember a moment spent inside my clothes in all that time, "you have had the proof of my identity between your fingers some dozens of times now, you know." He was sitting beside me on the settee, in a state of the most delicious dishevelment conceivable.  
  
" _Now_  I have, certainly," I grinned wickedly at him, and reached beneath his dressing gown, my fingers seeking for my 'proof.' He slapped my wrist away, but very half-heartedly.  
  
"My dear Watson, are you  _entirely_  indefatigable?" he asked, with an air of genuine curiosity.  
  
"I have never made a study of the question," I replied seriously, splaying my legs over his lap and moving my mouth towards his. "Would you care to try the experiment?"  
  
"What I would care for just now, John, is to watch you cross the room--rather slowly, I think, to permit me to admire the view--and retrieve the box of pen nibs from our desk."  
  
Holmes excels in bizarrely unpredictable statements which turn out to have every bearing on the matter at hand. It is one of the many reasons that I love him. I am also one of the few people who dares to disobey him. It is one of the many reasons that he loves me. "No, I don't believe I will," I said, and kissed him. "If you want it," I kissed him again, "you may go and fetch it yourself."  
  
He laughed against my lips, and toppled me quite suddenly backwards, swinging his legs around so that he lay atop me, horizontally on the settee. "Spoken like a true lover," he grinned. "Before I gave you my body, you would have sworn to slay dragons or drag down the moon to win me, and now that you have me you will not so much as cross the room to bring me a matchbox."  
  
"It's quite an ordinary matchbox."  
  
"Ordinary! Nothing of the kind. That matchbox, my boy, is the single remaining shred of proof that I ever committed so undignified an act as losing my virginity in a stable to a devilishly handsome young physician."  
  
I laughed. "Is it, then?"  
  
"You dropped it," he said simply, "and I kept it."  
  
He was looking at me with an emphasis that made my breath hitch. "You kept it?" I repeated. "All this time?"  
  
"Five years," he solemnly replied.  
  
"Why on earth  _did_  you wait so long?" I asked. "Two years lodging together, and you never said a word.  
  
His solemnity grew more pronounced and he began to trace delicate patterns on my damaged shoulder with one fingertip. "When we first renewed our acquaintance you were convalescent, and I felt that it was incumbent upon me not to place more strain upon your health than it could withstand. Later, of course, as your recovery became assured, I thought it possible that you had either forgotten the encounter entirely, or remembered it, and had reasons of your own to avoid pursuing a more intimate connection. Naturally, having foregone mentioning our first  _tête à tête_  for some months, it became increasingly difficult to raise the subject. The value I had come to place upon your continued presence in these rooms was far too high to make the risk of confronting you with the revelation without first securing a tolerable assurance of your willingness to overlook the omission."  
  
The less sure of himself Sherlock Holmes feels, the more polysyllabic his pronouncements. I smiled at him, and bought myself a few moments to consider my answer by indulging in a spot of osculation. He pressed down gratefully against my lips, but soon retreated again, watching me. "You were waiting for me to fall in love," I translated.  
  
He did not smile, but the tension left his body and his grey eyes brightened. "It may have been something like that," he said, and kissed me once again, quickly, before resting his head against my shoulder. "You were the first man to fuck me," he said, "and I was hoping you would consent to also being the last."  
  
"The last?" I enquired, as his lips were beginning to scrape across my scar, and I could feel his body warming to another passionate encounter. For all his teasing about  _my_  insatiability, he was hardly proving a model of restraint himself.  
  
"You haven't gone looking for anyone else," he declared. "Not in all the months you've been at Baker Street. And I intend," he moved lower, "that you", lower still, "shall never need to do so." He reached my prick and paused again to look up at me.  
  
"Will you stay?"  
  
"With your mouth where it is just now I would be a fool to leave." I smiled down at him. His expression, however, betrayed his disappointment at so flippant a response. I could mend that.  
  
I sat up, bending at the hips, and leaned forward to kiss the lips he lifted to meet mine. "Yes, William Sherlock Scott Holmes," I said, resting my forehead against his, "I'll stay."

**Author's Note:**

> Go to Chapter Two to read Holmes's memory of their first meeting. Or, if you prefer to see the same scene from the good doctor's point of view, you may proceed to Watson's memory of the occasion in Chapter Three.


End file.
